Moving wasn’t even on our radar 2 months ago, and Rachel and I were looking forward to some smooth sailing now that her health is getting back to normal. Instead, we’re adding another of life’s biggest stressors to the mix – a change of residence. For the past few weeks, in addition to coordinating the weekly publication of On Pasture with Rachel, I’ve been getting ready to put our home in Loveland on the market, and starting the search for our new place in Tucson.

I know you can imagine how this all feels. I was not expecting to leave Colorado, or this house for the foreseeable future, so accumulating stuff didn’t seem like such a bad thing. But now that we’re about to pick up and leave for a whole new climate, there are lots of things that just don’t need to make the trip. So I’m sharing a lot of stuff with friends and our local Goodwill store. Meanwhile, the house is getting stripped down to “show-home-ready” which means that things sometimes get put in drawers where neither my husband nor I can find them. I’ve made a couple of phone calls to Leah who has been helping me, and she always remember where the stuff is. Then there’s leaving all the friends we’ve made. Of course we’ll keep in touch and we’ll visit, but it just won’t be the same.

Here’s something Rachel and I will NOT be doing when she visits me in Tucson. How DID they get up into this cactus without getting filled with spines?!

All this personal stress has made us think more about livestock stress and how they feel when we move them to new places, separate them from friends and family, and how the stress shows up in their health. In addition, many of you have asked for more information on low-stress livestock handling. So this week, we’re bringing you the first of what will be many pieces on stockmanship.

Meanwhile, if you write or call me and I seem distracted or I forget to get back to you, you’ll know why. I don’t mean to be forgetful, so just poke me again (in a low-stress kind of way). 🙂

About the author

Kathy worked with the Bureau of Land Management for 12 years before founding Livestock for Landscapes in 2004. Her twelve years at the agency allowed her to pursue her goal of helping communities find ways to live profitably AND sustainably in their environment. She has been researching and working with livestock as a land management tool for over a decade. When she's not helping farmers, ranchers and land managers on-site, she writes articles, and books, and edits videos to help others turn their livestock into landscape managers.